


Leones en Reposo

by clockheartedcrocodile



Series: León de mi Corazón [3]
Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Demonic Possession, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Holy Communion | Eucharist, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intimacy, Living Together, M/M, Married Couple, Post-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:38:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: September is a time for the death and resurrection of things. It’s a time when things remain the same only by changing. Marcus looks up at the trees as he drives up the winding dirt road home, and wonders if this is a place where he might find some peace.





	1. I.

Blazing headlights pierce the September fog.

It’s a warm, damp night in a quiet, remote town. The new part of town is all red brick monstrosities, evenly spaced, with asphalt in all the wrong places and ivy that stubbornly clings to the walls. The old part of town is clustered tightly around a river that winds down the mountain, narrow and greenish and slow. The lamplight doesn’t flicker in that part of town, and some streets are too narrow for cars.

The pilot doesn’t know or care about any of this. She’s just passing through, the tires of her van squealing against the pavement as she takes the corners too fast. The pilot wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist, staring with tear-stained eyes through the fog ahead of her. She has only the barest idea of where she’s going.

The pilot drives straight through town without stopping until she reaches the place where the buildings grow more sparse and the trees begin to thicken. The headlights illuminate a broad sign, white with hand-painted black lettering- _St. Benedict’s Catholic Church._ On a different night, she would’ve wondered at the lack of the word Roman, but not tonight. Tonight, the pilot turns into the drive so sharply that she almost skids off the road.

Behind her, in the back of the van, the pilot can hear her husband’s wretched, labored breathing.

As soon as the van is put in park the pilot shoves the door open with one foot and stumbles out into the fog. She can hear crickets, chirping in chorus. They’re not loud enough to drown out the blood roaring in her ears.

The pilot runs up to the front door of the church. It’s a tall building, with a high spire and a wide, heavy-looking wooden door. She pounds her fist on it hard, but the wood doesn’t even rattle in its frame. “Hello?” she shouts in frustration. “Is there anyone in there?”

The pilot knocks again. No response. She begins to circle around the church, looking for a back entrance, but she finds none.

She can hear the awful noises from the back of the van even clearer now. He’s tearing up the carpeting. Peeling it up from the floor. The pilot thinks of his broken nose, his fingernails torn from their roots. How her mother’s voice had rattled up from his throat, and told her she never should’ve married him.

The pilot screws up her face, shuts her eyes tight. She pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to steady herself.

It’s then that the pilot hears the loud scraping sounds of metal on metal, and the click-clicks of locks being opened. She hurries back to the front door, standing there with her hands picking nervously at a loose thread on the sleeve of her uniform.

The door creaks slightly open, groaning as if in pain. The pilot sees a face half-peering out; swarthy and suspicious-looking, with a thick beard and graying hair the color of bracken. One eye gleams at her from the crack between door and wall; the milky, greenish color of new jade.

“Are you the priest of this parish?” says the pilot, a note of desperation in her voice.

The eye looks her up and down. “I am a priest of this parish,” he says slowly, “but not, I think, the one you’re looking for. I am only the caretaker.”

“Where is he?” says the pilot, stepping closer to the door. “Please?”

“He is at home,” says the caretaker. “In his house, on the mountain.”

“Tell me where.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please,” she says again, more calmly, though her voice still shakes. “It’s . . . It’s my husband, please . . .”

The caretaker narrows his eye at her, then retreats back into the darkness. The door closes with a deep scraping noise, like a barricade being shoved into place. It’s a big door, and heavy. Too heavy for a local parish.

The pilot is left on the front steps, fog rising up around her legs to dampen her skin. Behind her, in the dark, she can hear her van rocking back and forth, the weight shifting from wheel to wheel. She realizes that he must be hurling himself against the walls in an effort to flip the van.

After an interminably long moment, the door opens again. This time the caretaker opens the door wider, propping it open with a heavy wooden wedge.

“Help me bring him inside,” he says. “They’re on their way.”

“They?” says the pilot.

***

There’s a room on the second floor of the church with no windows and three locks. The caretaker- “Father Jeremy,” he had hissed through gritted teeth as they dragged her husband, bound and kicking, up the stairs- unlocks the door with three keys on a chain around his neck. Light from the hallway spills into its darkened interior; the pilot can see soft, padded walls, and leather-and-iron chains affixed firmly to the floor. A cold pit of fear opens up in her belly.

She hesitates on the thresh hold, her arms still around her husband, restricting his movement. His arms, bound together by leathers straps, flex and struggle madly as he tries to free himself.

“No,” whispers the pilot, and Father Jeremy seizes her husband by the collar of his shirt and drags him inside anyway.

Her husband lets out a deep, wet-sounding gurgle, like bubbles popping on the surface of a swamp. **Don’t let them hurt me,** he groans, his voice just familiar enough to make the pilot’s heart ache and just obscene enough to remind her that this is not her husband. **Please. They’ll kill me, you know they will. They’re murderers. Adulterers. Liars.**

The pilot stands trembling by the open door, her hands tucked under her arms to stop them shaking. She watches Father Jeremy lash her husbands limbs to the floor, one after the other. Legs together, arms spread. A crucifixion in a padded cell.

Her husband tries to bite Father Jeremy before he fastens the last chain, but his teeth clack shut on nothing. Father Jeremy stands up, crosses himself, and backs slowly out of the room. He gestures for the pilot to close the door.

She does. He locks it, one two three. “And now, we wait.”

“How long?” the pilot whispers tremulously. “Days? _Weeks?”_

“Not for these guys,” says Father Jeremy.

They sit on the hallway floor in mutual silence, listening to the screaming of her husband in the locked room, and the screaming of the crickets outside.

***

Father Jeremy leaves the moment the exorcists arrive.

The pilot can hear them muttering in the stairwell. Three long shadows thrown across the hallway wall. Father Jeremy’s heavy footsteps thump down the stairs; every step resounds in the pilot’s nerve-wracked brain like a nail being pounded into a coffin.

“Are you him?” she says dully. Her voice is hoarse from crying. “Are you the priest?”

The man who ascends the staircase first is by her side in an instant. “I am,” he says gently, in a thickly accented voice. “You did the right thing by coming here.”

He kneels next to her and offers his hand, but makes no move to touch her. The pilot takes his hand in both of her own and squeezes it, searching his face for some sign of fear or panic. She finds none. Only gentle eyes, the color of roasted chestnuts. His skin is dark too, and his hair is even darker; it’s been cut close to the skull. His leather jacket is still sticky with condensation from the fog, but his collar is bright and reassuring against his throat.

The pilot’s mouth has gone dry. “Please,” she whispers. “He’s my husband. He’s my husband. Please.”

“We know,” says the priest gently. “We know.”

The tall man that followed him lingers just behind him, a hat pulled low over his eyes and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He flinches when he hears a particularly loud rattle from beyond the door, and he looks over his shoulder, fixating the room with a look of sharp scrutiny.

“Who is he,” the pilot murmurs, almost to herself, pushing herself to her feet with the priest’s help. “Who is he.”

“He is my partner,” says the priest, without hesitation, “and, he is an exorcist.”

“You’ll want to wait out here,” says the exorcist. He removes his hat, revealing shaggy gray hair streaked with the barest hint of gold, and begins to roll up his sleeves. “This won’t take long . . . ten minutes at most, I imagine.”

“Like fuck I’m waiting out here . . .” says the pilot, her voice trailing away as she catches sight of his hands.

He’s missing two fingers off his right hand; the ring finger and the pinky. The stumps have long since healed over with thick knots of scar tissue, but the sight of them repulses her nonetheless.

The priest nods, acquiescing. “You can stay, if that will make it easier for you,” he says. “Just know that the thing in that room is not your husband.”

“But you can bring him back?”

“We can’t do a bloody thing,” says the exorcist, producing a leather cord from around his neck. Three keys, for three locks. “But through us, our Lord will bring him back.”

“Stand by the door, in case you have to run,” says the priest, “and don’t say anything.”

The three of them stand tense and silent in the hallway as the exorcist unlocks each lock, one by one. _Click, click, click._

The door swings open and they’re accosted by the strong, coppermeat smell of blood. Her husband- or rather, the thing inside his skin- bangs its head against the floor and snarls, spitting pink saliva through its torn lips. **I know you,** it snarls. Its eyes are rolling in its head like dice in a cup. **Brutus and Cassius. Still playing house?**

The exorcist bares his teeth in a mirthless grin. Together they pace in a circle around the wretched creature, one on either side, mudstained boots creaking against the floorboards of the church. The pilot watches them mirror each other’s steps.

 **Ugly fuckers,** the demon laughs. It thrusts against the air with its hips, struggling futilely against the chains that bind its legs and arms. **We’re coming for you, you know. We’ve got your number. Have you told him about your dreams yet, you worn-out cunt of a sodomite? They’ll come true sooner than you think.**

They fall into position as if they’ve been doing it all their lives, the exorcist at his head and the priest at his feet. The pilot lingers by the door, her heart in her throat, and says nothing.

Then, all at once, they move.

The priest draws a flask from the pocket of his jacket and lashes its contents against the demon’s skin. It howls and convulses, its skin boiling under its touch, and the pilot shrieks in pain and fear but holds herself back.

 _“Exorcizo te,”_ snarls the exorcist, falling to his knees at her husband’s head and crossing himself. _“Omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri . . .”_

 _“. . . et in virtute Spiritus Sancti,”_ whispers the priest along with him, the words spilling easily from their mouths as the demon thrashes between them. _“Ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei, quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est, ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo . . .”_

Wind begins to tug at the pilot’s hair and uniform, and she realizes that a breeze has begun to blow in a room without windows.

The exorcist grips the demon by its shoulders and forces it down, holding it still as the priest circles its body one more time. He drops to his knees beside its head and leans forward, pressing their foreheads together and laying his hand flat against the demon’s chest, over its heart. The pilot’s skin breaks out in a cold sweat; her fingernails are biting into the palms of her hands.

The exorcist, the one with the mutilated hand, is holding the demon’s head in a vice, forcing it to hold still. The pilot can see its teeth, broken and bloodied as it snaps at the air like a rabid animal. It bites down mere inches from the priest’s face, but his eyes are closed, his face a mask of concentration. Trusting his partner to keep the demon’s head still.

The priest begins to pray. It’s quiet, and fierce, in a language that the pilot does not speak.

Her husband’s whole body snaps taut as though electrocuted; his spine bends and arches, his head struggles to swivel, as though he’s trying to snap his own neck. The exorcist keeps him down, the veins in his arms standing out from the exertion. When he begins to pray along with his partner, his voice is as steady as a rock.

The pilot’s resolve crumbles.

She staggers out the door and slams it shut behind her, sinking to the floor. She can hear their voices rising behind her, the groaning of the demon, the whistling of the wind as it buffets the walls with nowhere to go. The pilot sits slumped against the door and pulls up her knees so she can wrap her arms around them.

Her mouth is dry, but sweat soaks her clothes. She feels, now more than ever before, powerless. On the drive here she had been imagining burying her husband. What it would be like so stand over the freshly-turned earth, leaving flowers and unspoken words at his grave. Then the long drive home, the turn of the key in the lock, the knowledge that when the door opened it would open to an empty home.

The pilot hugs her knees closer and stares at the opposite wall. Above her, hanging at eye level if she’d been standing, is a wooden cross. There are a few framed art pieces scattered on the wall all down the hall, and the pilot begins to examine them with that particular attention to detail that only panic can induce. They’re charcoal sketches, mostly. Birds in flight, or birds in cages, or baby birds with their mouths upturned to the sun.

The pilot used to draw birds too, when she was young. That was what drove her to learn to fly.

The door behind her opens abruptly and the pilot scrambles to her feet, backing away till her back is pressed flat against the opposite wall. The priest comes out first, looking weary, but happy. He rubs the back of his neck and breathes deeply, as though breathing clean air for the first time in months.

“He’s alright,” he says. “The spirit won’t trouble him again.”

The pilot rushes past him and falls to her knees beside her husband, embracing him. His breathing is weak and ragged, but regular. When she presses her ear against his chest, she can hear his heartbeat.

The exorcist undoes the chains binding him, one at a time, and when his arms are free the pilot’s husband reaches up to touch her arm, her neck, her shoulder. Anywhere he can reach. She presses her face against his bloody neck and whispers words of love.

When she looks up again, the pilot becomes aware of the priest and the exorcist, watching her from the open doorway. Their postures are exhausted, but their expressions are gentle.

Between them, framed perfectly between their two silhouettes, she sees the cross on the opposite wall.

 


	2. II.

The groundskeeper at St. Benedict’s is believed to live on the other side of the mountain, commuting across its precarious, too-narrow dirt roads to come into town every other day and tend the garden. In reality, Marcus lives much closer, in an out-of-the-way house on a dead end road clinging to the densely wooded mountainside. He lives there with his husband.

There’s a garden there too, and an orange tree. When they had arrived, the tree had been dying, withering away in an unfamiliar climate. Marcus tended to it daily, nursing it into a prouder tree. He has yet to see it in April, though he can imagine the oranges blooming among the leaves. Round and bright and prettier than jewelry.

He hopes that they’ll be safe in this town. He’d like to stay long enough for Tomas to taste one of the oranges.

They arrive home at three in the morning. Marcus’ eyes are red and raw from peering into the dark. He turns the key in the ignition, cutting out the engine. In the prevailing silence, he can hear the trees rustling in the wind. It’s the season when leaves begin to fall.

Tomas is sitting next to him, rubbing the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. He pushes the door open with his foot and hops down. Marcus does the same. Inside, he goes from room to room, turning on every light. It’s a small, cramped house, but it is theirs. Now and then Marcus will hear skittering in the walls, and his mind jumps to dark places before Tomas reminds him that mice will be nesting there for the winter.

Marcus limbs are aching after the night’s exertion, but it’s a good ache. The ache of another successful exorcism. The ache of being needed.

He watches Tomas hang his leather jacket- Marcus has already begun to think of it as Tomas’ jacket, although it once belonged to him- on one of the pegs by the door, and runs his hands through his hair to shake out some of the fog-damp. Marcus misses when he used to have long hair, but Tomas has wanted to look _young again_ lately, and Marcus is not about to stand in his way.

Tomas passes him on the way to the kitchen. “See?” he says. “We’re needed here.”

It’s three a.m. Too late to go back to sleep, and too early to be happy about it. Marcus resigns himself to a few sleepless hours before dawn and joins Tomas in the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe as Tomas starts assembling a sandwich.

“I like Father Jeremy,” Marcus says. “It was a good choice, bringing him on.”

Tomas slides open the knife drawer. The knifes rattle in their casings. “I wish it were you,” he says. “You’re wasted as a gardener.”

“I happen to like gardening,” says Marcus, with a mouthful of excuses ready and waiting. “It’s too much of a risk for us both to be in the public eye. Besides,” he adds, rubbing the back of his aching neck. His exhaustion is creeping up on him. “I’m not a priest.”

St. Benedict’s is their church now. Marcus feels it in his bones. He’s spent hours sweating blood over that place. Wrestling the tangled overgrowth of the grounds into something manageable. Re-spacing the fenceposts. Fixing the air conditioning when it crashed on them back in July.

It was worth it, though. To sit in the back pew of the church, his feet on the pew in front, watching Tomas preach before his parish. He’s beautiful, when he stands before them like that. Dressed in emerald green and sunlight. Almost as beautiful as he is when he cradles a child in his arms, his hands slick with blood and his eyes burning with holy fire as he whispers, _you are loved._

Marcus’ gaze lingers on Tomas’ hands as he slices the bread for his sandwich. Sometimes Tomas has trouble holding a knife. They don’t talk about it, but occasionally Marcus will take the knife in silence, and slice the bread for him.

This is not one of those times. Tomas’ hands are as steady as ever tonight, perhaps because he has saved a life, and the adrenaline in his system has had a chance to run its course. Marcus watches him rest the knife neatly beside the cutting board when he’s done with it. Tomas’ hands are the hands of a soldier, not a priest. The hands of an exorcist.

As if to combat the thought, Marcus approaches him and slips his arms around Tomas’ waist from behind. He rubs his cheek lightly against Tomas’ and smiles when he feels the scratch of his beard.

He feels, rather than hears, Tomas’ pleased hum. Marcus bumps his forehead against Tomas’ temple. “Yes?”

“I’m going into town tomorrow,” says Tomas. “Or today, I suppose. We barely have enough food to make this sandwich.”

Marcus exhales heavily through his nose and glances out the kitchen window. It’s still dark outside, sunrise won’t come for a while yet. The fog still hangs heavy among the trees. “Don’t leave a-”

“-a paper trail, I know,” says Tomas, disgruntled. He returns to his business at the counter. “I will be fine in town. We’re known there, even if we’re known by different names.”

_Even if we’re meant to be strangers to one another._

“This won’t last forever,” Marcus says. “You know it can’t. Just because we’re known and established here doesn’t mean we’re safe.”

“I believe we are safe. For now,” says Tomas firmly. “No one will find us here, and if they do, then we can go, and you won’t hear a word of complaint out of me.”

“That’ll be new.”

Tomas snorts, and Marcus grins, glad he got a laugh out of him at least.

They eat in silence, leaning shoulder to shoulder against the counter. Marcus closes his eyes, and enjoys the silence.

When he opens them again, he catches Tomas watching him. “What?” he says innocently.

Tomas grins, gives him a playful shove with his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re growing out your hair, _león._ It suits you.”

“My hairline’s going back.”

“It is _not,”_ Tomas insists. “If your hairline’s going back, then I’m balding.”

“Don’t tempt fate, Tomas,” Marcus says teasingly. He tries to run his hand through Tomas’ hair but Tomas ducks, laughing, and takes his hand by the wrist before he can touch.

It’s his right hand.

Marcus lets him hold it. He lets Tomas kiss the knuckles of each remaining finger, before brushing his lips softly against the thick, ugly scars where his pinky and ring finger used to be. Tomas is familiar with those scars. He has pressed his lips to them many times.

“I love your hands,” he says, holding Marcus’ hand between both of his own, as though warming it. He rubs his thumb along the lines of Marcus’ palm.

“Still?”

“Still.”

Marcus cups Tomas’ head with his other hand and kisses him again, half out of desire, and half so Tomas will drop his hand, stop fawning over it like it’s something precious. There are some nights when Marcus can’t bear to look at his hands.

“I know you are always on guard,” Tomas says gently, his breath warm against Marcus’ face, “but even our Lord rested. We have a parish now, and the demons come to us. This is a good place.”

Tomas’ eyes are the color of warm cinnamon pie. Marcus gazes into them, and believes, for a moment, that Tomas is right.

***

Marcus has nothing to do, and no work to attend to, so he decides to spend his day in worship.

That dark, foggy morning turns into a warm, lazy autumn afternoon, the kind where the sun burns bright and dries the dying leaves till the edges curl. Marcus likes to sit out in the yard on days like this, where the dappled shade of the orange tree provides a cool place to rest. The tree tends to struggle a little in this weather, but Marcus attends to it as he would to a child. He likes to think the tree provides shade in return, as a kind of thank you.

Marcus leans his back against the bark and opens his Bible in his lap, rolling a pair of charcoal pencils between his fingers as he muses on what to draw.

He closes his eyes, prays for some sort of guiding bolt of inspiration. Marcus is a tactile man, and sometimes it is difficult for him to worship Someone he cannot touch. But his pencils are smooth and familiar between his fingers, and his hands feel incomplete without smears of graphite. This is a kind of worship Marcus understands.

Marcus flips the pages to Luke 15, sets pencil to paper, and begins to draw the orange tree. One long line, from the crown to the root, and he forms the rest of the tree around that.

His drawings have sold tolerably well in town, for the odd bit of cash here and there. Mostly it feels like pity money, but Marcus has seen one or two faces light up as they’ve seen something they recognize in his drawings. His Bible knows only two pairs of hands; he never brings it into the town. But he’ll bring loose papers and rolled-up posters, tucked haphazardly under his arm so the pages crease. The drawings he shows are the most innocuous ones; birds, sunflowers, streets and houses that mean nothing to the people who buy them.

The most beautiful sketches by far are his drawings of people, but these rarely see the light of day. They are private things- worship, Marcus thinks, as he adorns his charcoal orange tree with leaves- and not for wandering eyes. Somewhere in the house, hidden among Tomas’ old poetry books and his dog-eared magazines is a sketchbook full of ghosts. The last time he’d seen Mouse cry, her hair tied back tight at the base of her neck as she worked a bullet out from between Tomas’ ribs. The first time he’d seen Bennett smile, standing over him and offering his hand like an angel, having just seen Marcus eat pavement on an icy sidewalk.

And Tomas.

Marcus fills up page after page with his likeness. Half black charcoal and half white paper, without blemish. Marcus can never quite get the set of his shoulders right, or the turn of his wrist, or the way his expression changes when Marcus walks into the room.

Marcus’ pencil hovers uncertainly over the half-completed drawing. He rubs his thumb into the charcoal bark, smudging it to give it some texture, then frowns up at the leaves swaying overhead. No oranges this time of year. He debates with himself about whether to draw the oranges in anyway.

There had been a time when Marcus wouldn’t have bothered with worrying about things like that. A time when he would’ve known it was meant to be an orange tree, and that would be enough. But now there’s another pair of eyes, and another pair of hands. Hands that treat the pages of Marcus’ cheap Bible with reverence. Never mind that the faux gold foil edge had worn off the pages years ago.

Marcus leaves the tree devoid of oranges. If Tomas asks, he’ll tell him it’s meant to be the tree outside, but something tells him Tomas will know without being told. The two of them are intimately aware of the movements of the other. Where one draws breath, the other exhales.

Marcus flips through the pages, searching for one more or less undefiled. It’s difficult these days. His life has been so long, and his pencils have been ground down to the nub.

He finds a loose bit of paper tucked in next to John 13.

This is not uncommon in Marcus’ Bible. Marcus has filled these pages with innumerable letters, photos, articles. The book bulges like an over-packed suitcase. It’s a miracle that the delicate pages haven’t yet ripped. (Those that have have been repaired with liberal application of scotch tape and prayers.)

But this one is new. It’s a plain white letter, folded neatly in half, with Tomas' neat, narrow handwriting slanted across it.

_Marcus Ortega,_ it reads.

It feels like a kiss on the cheek.

 


	3. III.

That night, Tomas makes love to him with the lights off and the windows open, sinking deep into the warm center of him until Marcus sighs against the pillow. Tomas grips Marcus’ hands tightly and presses his chest against Marcus’ back, his breath warm and ragged in his ear as he lets Marcus’ bear his whole weight. He rocks into him slowly and firmly, giving Marcus everything he wants, and Marcus shuts his eyes tight and lets out a low, amorous groan that makes Tomas’ breathing hitch.

 _“God,_ Marcus,” he murmurs weakly, his voice already wrecked. He presses his cheek against Marcus’ and kisses the corner of his mouth. Marcus’ lips part, an invitation, and Tomas takes the opportunity to kiss him properly, licking gently at Marcus’ tongue. “Tell me . . .” he mumbles into Marcus’ mouth, his voice muffled by kisses. “Please . . . _God_ . . . talk to me . . .”

 _“Tomas,”_ Marcus sighs. He tries to arch his back against Tomas’ cock, but Tomas’ weight is too heavy on him and he’s crushed against their now-familiar bed. Their mattress knows the shape of their bodies, and the smell of their shampoo. They’ve made love in it countless times, and still, when Marcus rolls over in the middle of the night, he expects to feel the sudden jab of a motel bedspring.

“You’re perfect,” Marcus pants desperately. His hands are tightly wound in Tomas’ own, or he’d be gripping the sheets for something to hold on to. “You . . . do so well, you . . . _fuck . . . fuck,_ you’re so good for me.”

He hears Tomas whine in pleasure, his mouth just behind Marcus’ ear; he knows he’s getting close. Marcus can feel it in his thrusts, in the way he forces himself deeper into Marcus, as though trying to envelop himself entirely. Tomas makes love to him like he’s trying to restore something lost to him; like he wants to give Marcus a child, if such things could be.

Tomas’ hands clench down on Marcus’ and he gasps, turning his head to try to look Tomas in the eye. “Bloody good husband for me, giving me what I need,” he groans, and his heart stutters in his chest when he sees Tomas’ eyes dilate wide. “My _provider.”_

Tomas clutches Marcus close to him, careful not to bruise him even as his whole body draws taut and releases with an agonizing, aching shudder. Marcus can feel the moment Tomas spends himself inside him.

They lie there in the darkness, too tightly entwined to even think of moving. Their legs are entangled with each other like hands clasped in prayer.

“Did you mean it,” Marcus mumbles against the pillow. “In the letter.”

“Yeah,” says Tomas hoarsely. His breath is warm and familiar against the back of Marcus’ neck. “I did. We could do it tomorrow night. The church will be empty.”

 _And it’s short enough notice that I won’t lose my nerve,_ Marcus thinks, but he simply nods, too blissfully exhausted to say anything else.

Sleep comes to them swiftly after that, but despite the warm feeling of Tomas at his back, a nightmare creeps quietly into Marcus’ dreams. It’s a dream as familiar to him as the pages of his Bible, or the worry-lines around Tomas’ mouth.

It begins with the house.

Marcus can hear the snapping of twigs outside. Crunching leaves, and the skittering, panicked footsteps of squirrels. He stands in the center of the living room, frozen by unendurable, too-slow dream movement that seems to lock him in place. There are windows on every side, and he can see beams of bright light piercing the darkness outside. Men with flashlights, circling the building.

He can’t move his feet, or open his mouth. His eyes are frozen open.

Sometimes the dream ends there. Marcus is shocked awake by his own heartbeat, and falls asleep again shortly after. But tonight, Tomas is there, standing by the front door.

He peers out through the peephole- _we don’t have a peephole in the door,_ Marcus thinks sluggishly, and that’s his first inkling that it’s a dream- and says, “It’s alright, it’s only Mouse.”

Sometimes he says it’s Bennett.

Or the Church.

Or Olivia.

Tomas’ hand is already on the doorknob before Marcus can force his way towards him, his hand outstretched, mouth open and silent. _Take your bags,_ he tries to scream, _take your bags and go, go, go,_ but the door is already open, and the flashlight beams make Tomas unfurl like ribbons.

When Marcus wakes from these nightmares, the first thing he feels is Tomas’ arms, solid and immovable around him. Sometimes this is enough to settle him back into sleep again. The bed they share is a double; they could’ve had a king or a queen, but they’d been too long cramped together in tiny motel beds to desire more space now. Tomas had told Marcus once that it made him uncomfortable to sleep in a bed so wide, and Marcus had agreed.

There are two packed suitcases beneath their bed. Just in case, Marcus tells himself. Just in case.

Fear worries its way into Marcus’ heart like a cancer. He’s taken up boxing to keep himself fit, even though it’s been a long time since he’s been in a proper scrap, and even longer since he’s had a scrap that he had to fight alone. His punches don’t fall as hard as they used to these days, but Tomas still likes to lean against the wall and watching him admiringly. Marcus will never tell him how it feels to be thought of as worthy of admiration; he hopes Tomas knows it already.

Marcus has no illusions about what he’s doing. He’s preparing himself in case they have to run.

It’s a good place, even if the threat of discovery casts their house in shadow. Tomas has his books, and Marcus has his orange tree, and they both have the church they refurbished together. _Just say the word,_ Tomas insists. _One word from you, and we’ll go,_ but Marcus doesn’t say the word. How could he, when Tomas is preaching again?

He seems so happy here.

If they’re found, Marcus knows, that fragile happiness Tomas has found will be lost. He’ll never taste the oranges, or see his fortieth birthday. Tomas will be reforged from a husband to a weapon, and Marcus will be put out of his misery.

Marcus can imagine it, too. He pictures himself being dragged out behind a woodshed and shot.

***

September is a time for the death and resurrection of things. It’s a time when things remain the same only by changing. Marcus looks up at the trees overhead as he drives up the winding dirt road home, and wonders if this is a place where he might find some peace.

His body is aching pleasantly from working down at the church. It’s a new day, full of new anxieties and innumerable little inconveniences. Marcus had spent it attending to the church grounds, sweeping up the fallen leaves and re-tooling the fence, _again._ The neighborhood kids keep coming by and knocking it over.

One of them had run up to Marcus and talked to him today, while he was digging up fresh holes for the posts. Father Jeremy ran a Bible study in the worship hall every week with Tomas’ blessing- mostly single fathers, with kids that were left to run wild and climb the trees outside. When Marcus was a boy, tree-climbing was a last resort, not a pastime.

One of the boys didn’t climb. He sat far from the others, pulling up clumps of grass and staring at the ground. Small and thin, with dark, freckle-spattered skin and glasses with frames much too big for him. Now and then he looked up at Marcus, watching him digging holes in the lawn and affixing fenceposts into them. Eventually he walked over.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” said Marcus, smiling at the boy. He stabbed his shovel into the earth and put his boot on the blade, resting his elbow on the handle. “Not much for climbing, are you?”

“Nah.”

“What’s your name?”

“David.”

“’S a good name y’know. Kings have that name.”

“My mom says I shouldn’t talk to you because you’re old and don’t need kids bothering you.”

“Your mom sounds lovely,” Marcus said. David had craned his neck, trying to get a look at his hand. Marcus crouched in front of him, putting them at eye level, and pulled off his glove. He gave David a little wave.

 _“Ew,”_ said David in awe, like it was the best and grossest thing he’d ever seen.

“Cool, right?” Marcus said, holding his hand out so the boy could get a good look.

David gaped at the scars, reaching out and turning Marcus’ hand over and over so he could see the palm too. “How’d you lose ‘em?”

“Would you believe me if I said cigarettes?”

David scowled at him. “That’s what Mr. Barton said,” he says, “when I asked him ‘bout his fake leg.”

“It wasn’t cigarettes,” Marcus laughed. He waggled his remaining fingers, to David’s delight and disgust. “I had to put down a mad dog a while ago, and it bit my fingers off. One after the other, like biscuits.”

 _“Yuck,”_ said David. “That’s _awesome.”_

“Yeah,” Marcus looked thoughtfully down at his hand. “It _is_ pretty awesome.”

And in the moment, he had almost believed it.

Marcus thinks about it as he drives home, dwelling on the encounter and staring at his hands. Pale and scarred, gripping the steering wheel like lizards clinging to a rock. Ugly hands, with ugly memories attached to their scars.

The truck rattles loudly as Marcus bumps over some potholes in the road, forcing him to shift his focus from his hands to his driving. For a brief moment, Marcus misses the old truck. The one that had taken him and Tomas from Chicago to Washington and everywhere in between. It had smelled like shit when it finally broke down, and the wheel wells had been scratched all to hell. It was a good truck. It’s bed had seen almost as many violent exorcisms as it had late-night picnics under the stars, Marcus complaining good-naturedly about the gas station beer while Tomas kissed his neck, his hand slipping down the front of Marcus’ jeans.

The new truck, the truck with no memories yet, grinds to a halt in the front drive of his house. Marcus leaves it parked out front as he goes inside. He scrapes his boots on the mat, for Tomas’ sake.

The house they share is barely big enough for the two of them, but years of motel rooms have made them anything but picky. The plumbing works, and so do the appliances. Now and then a dead tree limb will fall on one of the power lines, and Tomas will put flickering electric candles in every room until the power comes back on. Even the darkest corners of the house seem alive on nights like those.

It’s a good place to live. Tomas has his books, and is accumulating more every day; people in town give them to him as gifts, out of gratitude, or out of a desire to see old paperbacks put in a good home. Marcus has reached across to the bedside table for a glass of water more times than he can count, only to knock a book of poetry onto the floor and freeze, breathless, until he knows if he’s woken Tomas or not.

Marcus finds Tomas reading in the living room, one foot on the coffee table as he rests the book against his knee. He’d never used to put his feet on the furniture, before Marcus met him. _Bad influence,_ Marcus thinks, and smiles. “I’m home, luv,” he says, shucking off his jacket and tossing it carelessly across the arm of a nearby chair.

Tomas glances up at him and grins brightly, as though Marcus has made his whole day. Marcus realizes that he has been writing, not reading; there’s a pen in his hand, and the book is propped against his knee to serve as a table. “Everything go well?”

Marcus hums noncommittally and collapses on the couch next to Tomas, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of whatever he’s writing. “Defacing a book, are we?” he says.

“Not defacing,” says Tomas. “Copying.”

He slips a white sheet of paper out of the book- Marcus is reminded of the letter he found in his Bible yesterday- and folds it up before Marcus can see what he’s written there. Instead he shows him the cover of the little volume: _La Poesía y Frases de Mario Benedetti._ “Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“He was from Uruguay,” says Tomas thoughtfully, turning the book over in his hand to examine the cover. “The greatest poet of his time. Perhaps of any time.”

“I can think of a better one.”

This makes Tomas laugh. He tosses the book onto the coffee table, the scrap of paper with it, and swings his legs up on the couch so he can lay his head in Marcus’ lap. “You are becoming a sleazy old man,” he says proudly. “You will be flirting with waitresses next.”

“And risk my husband’s jealousy? I wouldn’t dare.”

He strokes Tomas’ hair like he’s trying to smooth a cowlick, and Tomas’ eyes flutter closed. Marcus winds his curls between his fingers like prayer beads. His fingertips naturally find the tender place at the back of Tomas’ skull where Mrs. Graham had tried to kill him with a hammer. The throb of his pulse feels faintly stronger there, and when Tomas complains of headaches, they always seem to pain him in the back of his head.

Tomas is stronger than Marcus will ever be. He walks like he has an army of angels at his back, and fears no one. It’s easy for Marcus to forget, in the face of such divine grace, how human his beloved is. But every time Tomas makes some too-casual comment about turning forty soon, every time he takes fifteen minutes to get his hair just right when five minutes will do, every time Marcus’ fingertips find that tender spot at the back of Tomas’ head, Marcus’ heart cracks in half for love of him.

 _I wanna give you the whole world,_ he wants to say. _You deserve more than a church and an orange tree._ But instead, he says, “Why have you been copying out poetry?” and cups the back of Tomas’ head as though to protect it.

“You’ll find out, _mi león,”_ says Tomas, giving him a languid, pleased look through half-closed eyes. Marcus loves to see him smile. “Tonight."


	4. IV.

St. Benedict’s is quiet at night, empty but for the two of them. The keys to the room upstairs are heavy around Marcus’ neck; three keys, three locks. All churches have their dirty little secrets, and that one is theirs.

Marcus starts making his way along the walls of the worship hall, lighting the candles one by one. His lighter gives flame on the first click. In years past, Marcus would smoke cloves faster than he could pray penance for them. He hasn’t had a smoke in months.

The stained glass windows look different at night, without sunlight painting them in splendor. There are only four, two on either side, but they’re the church’s pride and joy. Marcus touches one of the red panes of glass, cool under his fingertips, and thinks of how he and Tomas restored this neglected building together. Marcus with his hands and his labor, and Tomas with his passion for rebuilding dying parishes.

He’s busying himself at the altar now, laying out the bowl and chalice. He’s not wearing the proper clothes for it- only his collar and clericals today- but Marcus watches his hands flutter indecisively over the wafers and decides that he doesn’t mind.

It’s been a long, long time since Marcus has tasted communion.

It’s a word that means a spiritual union. A bite of bread and a swallow of wine that sees as a blood pact between man and the divine. The love of God made physical, one part memorial and one part revelation. An act from which the excommunicated are forever barred.

An act that Tomas had offered him freely, in a love letter tucked in the pages of his Bible. _Marcus Ortega. My love, and my lion._

In a dark forest in Scotland, not long before the most important day of Marcus’ long life, a demon had spat in his face and told him he was all used up. He didn’t need a demon to tell him that- his excommunication letter had said as much. It may has well have been written in blood.

Tomas had been in the room, at the time. He’d seen Marcus’ humiliation, and had the decency to stay quiet. Yet still he had looked for him, looked until he found Marcus in the last pew, drunk and shamed and half ready to open up his shoulder again.

 _I was looking for you all day._ Followed by a confused, disappointed, _You’re drunk?_

Marcus feels Tomas’ hand on his shoulder and he almost jumps out of his skin. “Hey,” he says, without an ounce of confusion or disappointment. “It’s me. Just me.”

“My mind’s all over the place tonight.

“I understand.”

“Thank you, though. For doing this for me,” Marcus insists, hoping Tomas knows what he means without actually saying it. He kisses him on the cheek, just once. “Go on then.”

Tomas gives Marcus’ shoulder a squeeze and leaves him, going up front to stand before his empty church. Marcus sits in the front row, as close to him as he can get, and bows his head as Tomas begins the long and arduous process of consecrating the wafers. The words are burned into Marcus’ memory. He’s said them a hundred times before, back when it was lawful for him to do so.

Once, when it had been late and they’d been driving in shifts to keep each other awake, Tomas had told him he wished he could taste a communion that Marcus himself had blessed. The thought made Marcus’ hands- whole then, though scarred- tighten on the steering wheel. There are so many things they might have done for each other, done _with_ each other, before Marcus’ collar had been stripped from him. So much lost time. So many lost communions.

He watches Tomas’ hands as he lifts one of the wafers, _“At the time He was betrayed, and entered willingly into His passion,”_ and here he breaks it in two, one half in each hand, _“He took bread and, giving thanks, broke it . . .”_

A ritual for a silent audience. Half the steps of a dance which Marcus is expected to conclude. He watches Tomas bless the wine, and drink deeply from the chalice before setting it down next to the basket. Only then does he look up, catching Marcus’ eye.

They do not ask each other, _what are you thinking about?_ There has never been a need.

“Come here,” says Tomas finally, and Marcus stands up, wiping his sweating palms on the thighs of his jeans. Something is clenching hot in the pit of his stomach. Marcus can feel his own pulse in his lips, his cheeks, his ringing ears.

He kneels before God and his husband. Tomas’ face is calm and placid, the picture of piety, but Marcus knows him too well for that. His eyes betray him, always.

“The body of Christ,” he says.

Marcus blinks slowly up at him. “Amen.”

He closes his eyes. He tilts his head back, and opens his mouth.

Tomas lays the wafer against his tongue and Marcus closes his mouth over it. It tastes the same as ever it did, plain and slightly salty and still warm from the priest’s hands.

Marcus chews it silently and swallows. _He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me._ Tomas touches him then, just lightly brushing against Marcus’ hair with his fingertips, and this more than anything else is what makes Marcus lean forward.

He lays his cheek against Tomas’ thigh and lets out a long, low breath. He can still taste the wafer on his tongue, pure and dry. It feels like a consummation. Like some great, almighty exhale at the end of a long day.

“Years,” Marcus whispers.

Tomas’ hand lingers on Marcus’ head, and Marcus leans into the touch.

“Tell me you’ll be my priest,” he says. “Tell me you’ll do this for me, always. Every week, if I ask for it.”

“I’d take your confession too, if you’d let me.”

“My husband,” Marcus sighs, letting his eyes fall closed. “My priest.”

Tomas’ fingernails scratch lovingly at the back of Marcus’ neck. He turns his hand up against Marcus’ chin- _up, up, up-_ and coaxes him to his feet.

His lips are soft and inviting against Marcus’ tongue. He can still taste the wine.

Marcus draws Tomas in close, their bodies snug up against each other. He opens his mouth for Tomas’ tongue, lets him slip inside. It’s gentle until it’s not so gentle, gentle until Tomas buries his hands more firmly in Marcus’ hair and cups his head, holding him still while he enjoys Marcus’ mouth.

Marcus fumbles blindly behind him for the front row and sits, pulling Tomas into the pew beside him. He get his arms around him properly, drags his lips against his cheek, his neck- he can taste the salt of Tomas’ sweat. He can _smell_ him there, where his collar grips his throat like a lover’s hand.

 _“Tu boca que es tuya y mía . . .”_ Tomas breathes. His hands are fisted too tight in the back of Marcus’ shirt, like he’s afraid he’ll turn to ash in his arms. _My own,_ Marcus thinks, tugging Tomas’ collar down so he can press kisses to the hidden skin there, _and my only. I’m not going anywhere._

“That’s not your poetry,” he murmurs between kisses.

“No,” Tomas’ every breath is a thunderclap in Marcus’ ear, and every whisper makes lightning sparkle along his spine. “It’s not, _mi león.”_

“Tell me more, _mi marido.”_

So Tomas does.

His whispers are fervent and feather-light in Marcus’ ears. Words that make Marcus ashamed of his brutal mouth, and his coarse tongue. He lays his head against Tomas’ shoulder as he listens, his eyes shut tight to keep them from watering. He thinks of orange trees, and sunlight.

 _“. . . y en la calle codo a codo,”_ Tomas finishes, his hands coming to Marcus’ shoulders to quell his trembling, _“somos mucho más que dos.”_

“I love you,” Marcus whispers, his nose pressed against Tomas’ neck. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I love you too, Mr. Ortega,” Tomas says warmly, and a little laugh escapes Marcus’ lungs, makes him feel lighter than air.

He watches as Tomas’ hand finds his own, interlacing their fingers together.

“Still a perfect fit,” he says.

Marcus says nothing.

Tomas skims his thumb lightly along Marcus’ wrist. “Sometimes I wonder,” he murmurs, “just how many lives these hands have blessed. How many children they’ve delivered back into the world.”

They sit together in the front row, almost on top of each other, not knowing or caring where one ends and the other begins. They make love to each other with their hands, silent but for their mutual breathing, and the sounds of the crickets outside. Marcus is acutely aware of the flickering candles, and the stained glass windows, unilluminated in the dark.

Blasphemy never once occurs to them. This, they realize, is worship.

“We built this place together,” says Marcus in the blissful aftermath. His voice is still rough with pleasure, and Tomas, who sits curled up against his side, lays his head against Marcus’ chest as though to feel for the vibrations. “It may have been here before us, but it’s ours now.”

They sit in the warm darkness, for once feeling no obligation. No destination. No new nightmares to push back from the door.

Outside, the crickets are still singing.

It’s going to be a long September.


	5. Epilogue

_ Te Quiero _  
_by Mario Benedetti_  
_(English Translation)_

_Your hands are my caress,_  
_my daily chords_  
_I love you because your hands_  
_work for justice_

_if I love you, it is because you are_  
_my love, my accomplice, my everything,_  
_and in the street, side by side,_  
_we are so much more than two_

_your eyes are an enchantment_  
_against the wicked day_  
_I love you for your look_  
_that sees and nurtures the future_

_your mouth, which is yours and mine_  
_your mouth is not wrong_  
_I love you, because your mouth_  
_knows how to shout rebellion_

_if I love you, it is because you are_  
_my love, my accomplice, my everything,_  
_and in the street, side by side,_  
_we are so much more than two_

_and for your sincere face,_  
_and your vagabond step,_  
_and your tears for the world_  
_because you are the people, I love you_

_because love is not a halo,_  
_no naive moral,_  
_and because we are a couple_  
_who knows that they are not alone_

_I love you in my paradise_  
_this is to say that in my country_  
_happy people live_  
_even if you do not have permission_

_if I love you, it is because you are_  
_my love, my accomplice, my everything,_  
_and in the street, side by side,_  
_we are so much more than two_


End file.
